


the chain

by devonthemenace



Category: Letterkenny (TV)
Genre: Other, Suicide mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-08-27
Packaged: 2019-07-03 02:21:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15809355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devonthemenace/pseuds/devonthemenace
Summary: After Devon dies, Roald seeks comfort in an unexpected place.





	the chain

**Author's Note:**

> hi this is short and i might want to do more with it but !! i miss devon goodbye sweet prince

It hadn’t been sunny in Letterkenny for the longest time.

Winters, in Roald’s particular opinion, when they came were awfully weary, and it often warranted whining when the winds would blow. Or was that too wordy? Where was I? Whatever.

He loved the sunlight, as much as Stewart loathed it. He had been out behind the house, staring at the clouds with a cigarette between dangling lazily between his fingers, thinking about Devon. It had been 6 months since the end of fall, when the snow started. They would sit out in the van together, huddled and freezing, watching the last leaves start to fall off the trees and lamenting at how long it would be until next Halloween. But something had been different, for a while it had been different. Then the fall turned to winter and he was gone. No word, no warning, not even a fucking note. 

Roald had always loved the summer, but this year it seemed… bleak. Uncaring. There was no one to save him from Stewart’s episodes but the meth, and the familiar beauty of the sun had become a harsh beacon of reminder. He’s gone, and he’s not coming back. He took another harsh inhale of his cigarette. He never used to smoke much, but it was different now somehow. The smell reminded him of better times, like the sting in his lungs letting him know he still had to breathe oxygen. He had never felt so out of place in his own body. Like none of his skin belonged to him, like every tissue was made for someone else. He suddenly seemed conscious of himself in his overalls, like he might ash in his chest hair and light himself on fire or something. He was no good at grieving, it always made him anxious. The obnoxious J-Pop in his ears was too loud. He ripped out his headphones, too lazy or too tired to bother turning it off first, and focused in on the screech of waking birds. He needed sound, any sound at all to stop him from imagining Devon’s voice still next to him or his fingers tapping lightly against the wood behind them. He stared at his cigarette, close to its filter, and contemplated stubbing it out on his arm. He wondered what the pain might feel like, but quickly shook the feeling off and simply dropped the butt unceremoniously on the ground. 

He wandered back into the house, and followed the thumping bass and burnt plastic stench of meth smoke into the basement. Stewart was unsurprisingly passed out on the couch, face down and drooling on his own arm. Roald made quick work of moving over to the back corner, loading up his bong and taking a hit. He was beginning to become lucid, and it was too much for his tired mind to handle. He stumbled from the house and down the road in a daze, unsure of his direction or his intention.

When he arrived at the farmhouse and knocked on the door, Wayne answered in a huff.

“You’d better not be here to see Katy,” was his only greeting. At this, Roald began to sob. He cried and cried, until he couldn’t hold himself up and then, he collapsed to the floor into a ball.

“Hey. Roald,” Katy had walked up and knelt down next to him, placing a consoling hand on his shoulder. “Stand up. I’ll take you inside.”

The sunlight that bounced off the house’s white walls burned Roald’s dry eyes. He screwed them closed in an effort to keep his vision, though he found his tears were dehydrated and salty, and those burned too. Feeling the hopelessness of his situation sink to his gut, he sat next to Katy on the sofa and wept. Katy said nothing for a long time. Then, with the delicate precision of a nurse administering a needle, her words rang with the same sharpness.

“I know you miss him, Roald. But it’s been half a year. He would’ve wanted you to be happy. Go to the bathroom and sort yourself out. I’ll give you something to eat.”

 

Roald awoke a few hours later in a bright, sweet smelling bedroom. It was Katy’s, though he didn’t know until she saw a picture of her on the bedside table, nestled sweetly between Riley and Jonesy, looking as happy as he could have been. He felt his stomach turn over, and he couldn’t tell if he was going to vomit or cry again. Either way, he stumbled to his feet and made his way gingerly down the stairs, where he found the house to be eerily quiet. It was empty of anyone apart from Katy, who sat waiting at the kitchen table. She didn’t move as he sat down across from her, nor did she look up from her drink.

“When my mum died, I was sad for a really long time. Sometimes I still am. But you have to learn how to deal with it.” She looked up at him, but he continued staring across the table at her fingers, which nervously flicked the paper of a teabag. She sighed, and stood up. “Wait here.”

She returned with a bottle of liquor, which she outstretched to him.

“We’re going to sit down and talk about this shit, okay? So we may need this.”

Roald took the bottle from her and sipped at it, wincing at the taste but welcoming the warm burn it caused in his chest.

“What’s there to talk about?”

“For starters,” Katy snatched the bottle back and sipped it. “You showed up at my door crying, then passed out. For another thing, you look like the corpse of someone who died in the War of 1812. When was the last time you ate?”

“Time is an illusion perpetuated by the corporate leaders of our moneyblind society.”

“I remember the first time I saw Fight Club, too.”

“Charming.”

“I’m not here to charm you. I’m just here to listen. So talk.”

So, he talked. He talked for the first time in what felt like years about whatever he wanted to talk about. He talked about Devon and the things that he liked, talked about sad things and happy things, old stories, new stories. As he talked, he drank, and as he drank, he talked more.

“I still love him, Katy. I don’t think I’m ever going to stop.” At this, she sighed.

“You’re not going to. You don’t have to, either. It just means something else now.”

“It just means something else,” he echoed. And he kept drinking until he forgot how.


End file.
